Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy...
Submissive to everything, open, listening...
Something that you feel will find its own form.
--Jack Kerouac, from "Belief and Technique for Modern Prose"

May 08, 2005

Rainy Mother's Day

A soaking rain is falling, thunder growing closer in a dark gray sky. But it’s welcome because we just re-landscaped the yard, laying in sod and planting trees and bushes after the lawn had been stripped bare by nine years’ of two boys’ running and fighting and ballplaying and mud–digging and fort–building.

HAPPPY MOTHER’S DAY to all mothers who have had rain in their lives, and that’s all of you. Happy Mother’s Day most of all to my dear wife Agent 61, who is totally responsible for our landscaping and for many other things that go on around me while I’m submerged in words, and who is mostly responsible for my happiness and that of my two favorite subteens, Agents 95 and 97.

And a hearty handclasp of fellowship to You-Know-Who, the superb mother of my two grown idols Agent 81 and Agent 83. We’ve blogged recently about choosing one’s ex-spouse wisely. What I’ve done wisely is to choose the mothers of my children.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom and my mother-in-law, whose code names are under such deep cover that they shall not be revealed, and to my sister–in–law, Agent 62, who is a forensic pathologist, a certified paratrooper, a retired army major, a kayaker, and a Tennessee sweetheart.

Happy Mother’s Day to all my blogfriends and podmates who are mothers.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the single mothers out there who do the hardest job on earth and, judging from the ones know, do it well.

And Happy Mother’s Day to the lesbian mothers, whose job is made harder by the society to which they contribute good, well–adjusted new people. At our elementary school, several of my kids’ classmates are being raised by lesbian couples. These children are uniformly fine, bright, decent kids. The mothers are as devoted as any parents we know, and their unions are as durable and loving as anybody’s. They have gone to extraordinary lengths to have children, such as traveling to China and running the gauntlet (actually creeping and crawling the gauntlet, for such is the pace) of two nations’ legal systems. These children are deeply wanted; none of them is the fruit of carelessness, except on the part of their biological parents.

The other day, I overheard Agent 95 and one of his friends talking about the friend’s recent visit to a mall:

“Me and my mom went to this store where they had…” (add mind-numbing subteen description of the contents of a cool store).

“Which mom?” Agent 95 asks.

The friend goes on with his description of games, games, games…

“Which mom?” Agent 95 persists, ever the seeker after truth.

“(Add more mind–numbing game details),” the friend goes on as if in a gaming trance.

“Which mom did you go with?” Agent 95 persists.

“I don’t know,” the friend shrugs, and they go on to speak of other normal things.